jane-eyre

care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six o’clock
of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a
road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though
fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all along the
road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as
promised well for the future: its blue—where blue was visible—was
mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and
thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—
it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind
its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a
golden redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I
stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind
reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to
a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond friends
looked out for me and waited my arrival. ‘Mrs. Fairfax
will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,’ said I; ‘and little
Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you
know very well you are thinking of another than they, and
that he is not thinking of you.’
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as
inexperience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough
to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester,
whether he looked on me or not; and they added—‘Hasten!
hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days
or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!’
And then I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing
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